INTRODUCTION

Wolfgang Wildgen
University of Bremen

The volume "Process Linguistics" contains the second series of

articles collected by Thomas Ballmer in the years 1981 and 1982.
He had the intention to represent the entire range of scientific
activities in this new sector of linguistic research. The first
series of papers was completed when Thomas Ballmer died (2nt^ de-
cember 1984) and my colleagues Hannes Rieser and Hans-Jurgen
Eikmeyer took care of it. The volume "Linguistic Dynamics. Dis-
courses, Procedures and Evolution" appeared in the collection
"Research in Text Theory" (De Gruyter, Berlin, 1985). The original
introduction to the two volumes written by Thomas Ballmer is
published as a section of this book (pp. 1-14).

As the second volume was not complete and finished, it had to be

modified. I included some new articles: Thomas Ballmer's essay:
"Case, Aktionsart and Ergativity" and an article by myself, which
is complementary to Ballmer's paper and elaborates some ideas put
forward by him. Some of the articles originally submitted had been
published in the meantime, some have been withdrawn or revised by
the authors. The general character of the volume, however, is in
accordance with Ballmer's original concept.

Almost five years after Thomas Ballmer's initiative we can look

back on the "dynamic movement", which began in the mid-seventies
and had its heyday between 1981 and 1985. As a point of departure
of our "historical" reflection we can consider the first announce-
ment of the volume "Linguistic Dynamics", written by Thomas
Ballmer in 1981.

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LD First Announcement

During the last few years a view of linguistic

phenomena was given a new impulse and revival
which is best characterized as dynamic.
In contrast to an exclusively relational and
static conception, the dynamic view concentrates
on linguistic processes. Temporality is in
focus. The production, flow and interpretation
of utterances and thoughts are considered in
temporal detail. Procedural mechanisms of
language are discussed. The creation and pro-
cessing of discourse are of increasing concern:
motivation, goals, intention, planning, action,
context change, performance, reactions. In addi-
tion the mental and linguistic procedures on the
level of speech synthesis and analysis, the dynam-
ic viewpoint of language development, of histori-
cal and maybe even of biological evolution become
of interest. Psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic
and anthropological questions are raised as well
as questions of second language learning and
teaching. Theoretical strands of linguistics
- logical grammar, artificial intelligence,
theory of grammar, etc. - as well as empirical and
applied fields of linguistics can make use of the
new perspective of analysis.

There is the idea of collecting original papers

focusing upon the various topics of linguistic
dynamics - as this newly developing viewpoint may
be called perhaps - and to publish them in a volume.

The background of this enterprise were scientific activities and

publications since 1978, especially the discussion in the Biele-
feld working group on "Language and Logics" (since 1974). In
1978 a workshop was held which discussed the problem of vagueness
and fuzziness (published in Ballmer and Pinkal, 1983). Some of
the work was also documented in the volume: "Empirical Semantics
I, II" edited by Burghard Rieger and in the reader: "Words, Worlds
and Contexts. New Approaches in Word Semantics" edited by Hans-
Jiirgen Eikmeyer and Hannes Rieser. The group of young scholars in-
terested in the dynamical and procedural aspects of language also
met at several congresses such as:
- The Annual Meeting of the German Society of Linguistics
(DGfS) in Regensburg (1981). Thomas Ballmer organized a
workshop on "Dynamic and procedural aspects of semantics".

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- The Semiotic Colloquium at Hamburg (1981), where H.-J. Eikmeyer

and H. Rieser directed a workshop on "The constitution of
meaning".

- The Annual Meeting of the DGfS in Cologne (1982), where Thomas

Ballmer chaired a workshop on "Dynamic and processual aspects
of semantics".
- The German Meeting of Germanists in Aachen (1982) where Burghard
Rieger organized a workshop, the papers where published under
the title "Dynamics in the constitution of meaning".

- The workshop "Procedural Linguistics" in Bielefeld organized by

H.-J. Eikmeyer and H. Rieser (1982).

- The Roundtable: "Dynamical Aspects of Language and Logics" or-

ganized by Arnold Oberschelp et alii in Kiel (1983). Meetings
dealing with more specific topics at Passau (1983) and Biele-
feld (1984). At the Bielefeld Meeting of the German Society
of Linguistics Herman Haken delivered the inaugural speech:
"Is language a synergetic system?". The co-referents were
Thomas Ballmer, Hans-Jurgen Eikmeyer and Wolfgang Wildgen.

The group of dynamicists who met on these occasions had very dif-
ferent scientific interests and applied different methods. They
were generally interested in methodological and theoretical inno-
vations which could integrate the multiple advances in the inter-
disciplinary study of language without losing the high level of
formal and mathematical sophistication reached in theoretical
linguistics. We can distinguish several centres of interest:

- textual and conversational processes,

- processes of language use, linguistic innovation and
language change,
- morphogenetic and evolutionary aspects of language,

- computational models of language processing (procedural

models),

- applications of the theory of (nonlinear) dynamic systems

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in linguistics (catastrophe theory, bifurcation theory,

theory of self-organization, synergetics etc.).

The death of Thomas Ballmer, who was interested in all these fields
hastened the separation into different subgroups, each of which
tried to find a stable methodological frame and to consolidate
first results in empirical research. A unified theory of lingu-
istic dynamics became only a long-term goal. In a sense this and
the preceding volume "Linguistic Dynamics" document a first stage
in the scientific development. A subsequent stage will lead to
divergence and consolidation.

The papers contained in this reader are ordered into three groups.

The first group of papers explores the consequences of a radical

shift of paradigm in theoretical linguistics: from the discrete,
structural, combinatorial paradigm to the continuous, dynamical
paradigm. The term "dynamics" gets a precise reading founded in
the mathematical theory of dynamic (especially non-linear) sys-
tems. In this narrow sense a dynamic theory of language or a dy-
namic model is a theory or a model formulated within the framework
of the kind of mathematics developed in catastrophe theory, bi-
furcation theory and nonlinear systems theory (cf. Casti 1985).
The first paper in this group sketches the theoretical programme
of the continuous, analogue and dynamic modelling of linguistic
phenomena. Tim Poston, a specialist in mathematical systems theory,
shows some interesting applications of the new paradigm to the
phenomenon of meaning shift and to the geometry of lexical fields.
The second paper by Thomas Ballmer sets out with a summary of
results obtained in the analysis of the German lexicon of verbs
(cf. Ballmer and Brennenstuhl, 1985). The central notion of a
three-dimensional semantic space is applied to the description
of case, ergatlvity and 'Aktionsart'. As for the theoretical back-
ground, he refers to bifurcation theory and to the theory of self-
organizing systems. The lexicological perspective is taken up in
the paper by Wolfgang wildgen, who summarizes results of cata-
strophe theoretic semantics and considers basic fields of lexical

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categorization, in the field of basic colour terms, of evaluative ad-

jectives and of verbs for basic actions). In its last section the
paper elaborates Ballmer's concept of a semantic space within the
framework of catastrophe theoretic semantics. A second paper by
Wolfgang wildgen applies catastrophe theoretic schemata to the
description of nominal compounds in German. He arrives at some
basic dynamic principles which govern the coining and the interpre-
tation of nominal compounds in German.

By contrast the second group of papers is concerned with empirical

questions related to dynamic aspects of language. Walter Kindt asks
the fundamental question: "why have linguists not so far freed
themselves of such static views and applied themselves to the
development of dynamic conceptions of language?" (this volume,
pp.167f). He argues in favour of a more empirically oriented se-
mantics: "without stronger empiricism of semantics it will not be
possible to develop dynamic models; without dynamic modellings,
however, no effective semantic theories applicable to practical
problems will be obtained", (ibidem, p. 168).

The papers which follow try to approach processual aspects of

language in a rather informal way. Ton van der Geest gives a
comprehensive picture of language acquisition and language learning
and evaluates the controversy between the (Chomskyan) language
acquisition theory (LA) and the psychological theory of language
learning (LL). Florian Coulmas deals with the dynamics of language
use and of actual changes in language use. The creation of new
derivations, compounds, metaphors, idiomatic expressions (in Eng-
lish) allows for an empirical analysis of actual processes of
linguistic innovation. His results encourage the reassessment of
basic issues in linguistic theory such as: the arbitrariness and
complexity of the linguistic sign. Marina sbiza presents the
current discussion on speech act theory and develops a dynamic
model of the illocutionary act. Speech act theory "ought to be
the study of the changes that speech acts bring about in their
own contexts" (in this volume, p. 252) and should finally" succeed
in developing into a theory of human interaction" (ibidem, p. 278).

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In the last group of papers questions of language processes are

treated within the framework of traditional formal or technical
methods. Alice ter Meulen considers discourse phenomena within
the framework of modeltheoretic semantics. Her paper marks a
specific stage in the development of these models, i.e.: "the
transition from Montague Grammar with its complete information
models to dynamic interpretation based on partial information
models" this volume, p. 383). In Anthony Jameson's and Wolfgang
wahlster' s paper a computerized dialogue system (HAM-ANS) con-
stitutes the background for the simulation of the generation of
anaphora, ellipsis and definite descriptions. Their system is
able "to take into account the existential assumptions, domain-
related desires, and referential beliefs ascribed to the part-
ners." (this volume, p. 309). In the contribution by Ju. K. Orlov
the flow of speech is analysed statistically. He discusses the
results of structural and descriptive models following Herdan's
probabilistic concept of language, with particular reference
to current research done in the URSS.

The studies brought together in this reader reveal the large

spectrum of processual and dynamic models and descriptions. In
terms of continuous scales we could arrange them between two
extremes:

A. Mathematical models for continuous, nonlinear processes (with

self-organization or stabilization) applied to the field of
linguistics.

B. Conservative structural models augmented by techniques for the

covering of "dynamical" aspects (logical models with "dynamic"
interpretation, probabilistic models for the lexicon and
computational models with procedures instead of structures).

In the middle section of the scale we find empirical enterprises

which concentrate on dynamical aspects of language, language use
and the acquisition, learning, innovation and change of language.
At present it is necessary to develop the whole field, although
dynamic system theory promises to become the backbone of the dynam-

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ic and processual paradigm, as it opens up the way to a large in-

terdisciplinary field from neurodynamics (cf. Scott, 1977) to the
social dynamics of interacting populations (cf. Weidlich and Haag,
1983). A first integrated view of dynamic linguistics based on
dynamic systems theory is unfolded in Wildgen and Mottron (forth-
coming 1987).

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References

Ballmer, T.T (ed.), 1985, Linguistic Dynamics. Discourses,

Procedures and Evolution. De Gruyter, Berlin.

Ballmer, T.T and W. Brennenstuhl, 1985. Deutsche Verben.

Narr, Tübingen.

Ballmer, T.T and W. Kindt (eds.), 1980. Zum Thema Sprache

und Logik. Ergebnisse einer interdisziplinären Diskussion.
Buske, Hamburg.

Ballmer, T.T and M. Pinkal (eds.), 1983. Approaching Vagueness.

North Holland, Amsterdam.

Casti, J.L., 1985. Nonlinear System Theory. Academic Press,

London.

Eikmeyer, H.-J. and H. Rieser (eds.), 1981, words, worlds, and

Context. New Approaches to Words Semantics. De Gruyter,
Berlin.

Rieger, B. (ed.), 1981, Empirical Semantics, Vol. I, II. Brock-

meyer, Bochum.

R i e g e r , B. (ed.), 1985, Dynamik in der Bedeutungskonstitution.

Buske, Hamburg.

Scott, A.C., 1977, Neurodynamics. A Critical Survey. In: Journal

of Mathematical Psychology, 15, pp. 1-45.

Weidlich, W. and G. Haag, 1983. Concepts and Models of a Quanti-

tative Sociology. The Dynamics of Interacting Populations.
Springer, Berlin.

Wildgen, W. and L. Mottron, (forthcoming 1987), Dynamische

Sprachtheorie. Brockmeyer, Bochum.

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